Re: Ignorance?
Nope. Not being offended on behalf of someone else. Passing on the message it is offensive. But not for "offense", but that you will lose customers/users because of it.
Not likely really. Maybe they won't gain some, but anyone who uses it knows what it is, what the name is, and what the UI looks like, and enjoys using it anyway.
If I don't like chocolate, and you only sell chocolate flavour ice cream, you lose the customer.
Or you never get the customer. I'm a specialist in chocolate ice cream, I strive to make the best I can. I do a great job because I don't dilute my expertise with other stuff.
If I don't sell a product you like don't come to my store. Are you the sort of person who expects to get cheese'n'ham on rye at a hardware store?
A very bad analogy anyway, as I've worked in a couple of specialist shops and much prefer to buy from them - I'll get terrible meat at the supermarket, piss-poor fruit and veg, and mediocre deserts. The bakery however - their stuff has to come via divine inspiration! The worst butcher in the area does exquisite meat and even their cheapest sausages are far superior to the crap the supermarket serves, and the greengrocer? Fresh, sold by experts who can advise on all sorts of new cooking ideas - not the garbage that was fresh sometime last year that rots on the supermarket shelves.
(No, I don't have the time to shop around - but I make the time because life is way to short for supermarket swill)
GIMP could look to gain some users if they change their name/system/gui a little.
And they'll loose a hell of a lot more. Why should I have to re-learn my workflow because some people are just unable to understand the simplistic interface? Why should I have to re-learn the name because someone chooses to be offended by something that is not intended to be offensive?
It's not an offensive term, as a word or acronym. In whatever of the many definitions there are, it is not and never was offensive. But some people choose to be offended by the silliest little things, and the rest of us should have to suffer?
If you think "G.I.M.P" is offensive, I suggest you get out of your sheltered little world and travel a bit - see what things are like in other cultures, learn that words have many more than one meaning. As that terrible 80's (or 70's?) sitcom theme song said - "what might be right for you may not be right for some".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
